Georgia: Tbilisi Using Friendship, Not Prison, to Fight Juvenile Crime

This story was amended on 4/11/11 to correct the source of the juvenile mentoring program grant.

With its prisons packed, Georgia is trying to keep troubled youngsters out of jail with a program that makes mentoring a key part of the country’s juvenile justice system.

Georgia’s “zero-tolerance” policy toward crime has been successful in slashing crime rates, but it has also produced a near 100-percent occupancy rate in Georgian prisons. From 2004-10, the prison population almost quadrupled to 23,800, according to statistics compiled by King’s College London’s International Centre for Prison Studies.

To read the full story

Giorgi Lomsadze is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi and was a 2004-2006 participant in the Edmund G. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program.

Georgia: Tbilisi Using Friendship, Not Prison, to Fight Juvenile Crime